Dozens are feared dead on Wednesday after a passenger plane carrying 67 people from Azerbaijan to Russia crashed in Kazakhstan, authorities said.
The Azerbaijan Airlines plane, which crashed near Aktau, a city in southwestern Kazakhstan, had 62 passengers and five crew members on board, the Emergencies Ministry of Kazakhstan said in a Telegram post. The Kazakh Ministry of Health later published a list of 29 survivors, including two children.
Russian news agency Ria Novosti reported that the passengers were 37 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russians, 6 Kazakh citizens and 3 Kyrgyz citizens, citing the Kazakh Ministry of Transport.
Emergency responders work at the scene of the accident.
The flight was from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny in Russia’s Chechnya region but was diverted to the Russian city of Makhachkala, 100 miles east of Grozny, due to fog, the airport’s press service said. -Grozny told the Russian. the national news agency Tass.
The Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing 1.8 miles from the city of Aktau, according to a statement issued on Telegram by Azerbaijan Airlines.
The initial investigation found that the plane collided with birds and was diverted to Aktau due to an emergency on board, according to a statement issued to Telegram by the Russian aviation authority, Rosaviatsia.
The investigation is ongoing and more details about the incident will be provided, Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement released to Telegram.
There was a fire at the crash site but it was “completely extinguished,” the Kazakh Emergencies Ministry said.
It added that a total of 150 personnel and 45 units of equipment are involved in emergency response.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin called his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, to express his condolences.
“We deeply sympathize with those who lost their relatives in this air crash, and we wish the survivors a speedy recovery,” said Peskov, adding that Aliyev was forced to leave St. .
Aliyev announced Dec. 26 as a national day of mourning in Azerbaijan.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov expressed his condolences to the families of the passengers who died in the post on his Telegram account on Wednesday morning.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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